Rain of Rust
by Wildeve of the Heath
Summary: Ymir is a washed up writer with just a bottle of beer sitting right by her. Nothing seems to faze her, even as the winds pick up to bring a torrent of chill over her dry skin. It's been like this for lord knows how long, like this until a notebook falls in front of her and a slender hand comes to pick it up. MODERN!AU
1. Chapter 1

I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin

Rain of Rust

Ymir is a washed up writer with just a bottle of beer sitting right by her. Nothing seems to faze her, even as the winds pick up to bring a torrent of chill over her dry skin. It's been like this for lord knows how long, like this until a notebook falls in front of her and a slender hand comes to pick it up.

MODERN!AU

A/N: I'm releasing all these fics at once, most of them pilots and just random stuff to keep me occupied throughout the year. They will not follow a schedule as they are based on what I feel like working on for that day. *shrug* Gotta keep me busy, eh?

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><p>"...I want your assignments to be placed on my desk by Friday morning. No excuses!" Hanji chimed as students filed out of the lecture hall.<p>

Krista packed her notebooks and pencils into her book bag. It was another winter day in Trost, the city that seemingly never sleeps. The heating system for the Literature building was broken for the semester, causing students and faculty. She had taken to wearing a trench coat over a hoodie, and underneath that was two sleeved shirts. Even behind her scarf it was still cold.

She wiped away a drip of snot that had dripped, she sniffled and clipped the last latch in her bag. Unfortunately, one notebook couldn't fit in her stuffed bag, forcing her to carry it with her.

Hanji waved her away as she was the last person to leave, the eccentric teacher turned to her TA, Moblit, ranting to him about some theory she had produced in her studies.

Krista didn't want to be held back by her, she avoided being sucked into the conversation, she left as soon as possibly could and met up with Sasha.

The brunette wasn't dressed as warmly as her. She had come from further north, claiming she faced colder situations than what Trost could offer. She only wore a windbreaker over whatever was under her, along with leather gloves. Gloves, it meant she was driving home for the day, her hours in class up.

"Cold day, huh?" Krista huffed, a bit of a mist producing from her mouth.

"Ya," Sasha said, rubbing her hands together,"shoulda brought an extra coat though, news said a storm's comin' up!"

"Yet here you are in that."

"Miscalculations," Sasha muttered as she looked out the window. Ice had covered the edges, leaving patterns of crystals around the edges. Only by a few more hours will the entire thing be encased in it. "I'd offer ya a ride home...but Eren and the others took it up."

Krista shook her head. "I don't live far, I'll be fine."

"Sorry 'bout that."

They both attended UT, University of Trost. It wasn't a high end school like the University of Mitras but it was part of a chain of prestigious colleges by the state. By most people, Trost was considered the lowest in the series but it was a good one nonetheless, known for its literary alumni. Such proof came in the glass case that showed the awards earned by students long past.

One day, Krista hoped she would earn her place along one of the few up there. They passed the case holding pictures and trophies, having seen it so many times, Krista no longer stopped to stare at the people as much as she had done in her first year here.

Down the hallway at the main entrance, students gathered to avoid the harsh snow outside. They were either waiting for their rides or friends that would ride with them, Krista wasn't one of those people today. She mustered up the courage to walk into the increasing winds and braved the storm.

Behind her, a random guy saw, drawing the attention to her as he said aloud,"Crazy bitch."

-...-

Crazy bitch indeed.

She was already on the main street and off campus.

As she stopped at a stoplight, she realized it may as well be suicide that she wandered out from the confines of the building. She hammered her hand against the metal button to make the crosswalk safe to go. Next to her was a man who reminded her of a hairy beast under all his furs of the jacket, he was looking ahead, uncaring she was next to him.

She failed to acknowledge him as the light blinked white, an indication to leave.

They walked side by side and parted ways at the next corner.

Just another block away and then her apartment would be in view.

Huddled at the front of a store, tucked behind a pillar to avoid the winds, was a mass of worn out clothes. The individual's face was tucked in arms as the person shielded out the harsh cold. To the person's right, sitting against the wall, was an empty beer bottle; she guessed that this bum was an alcoholic.

Her gaze was fixed on this person, she failed to pay attention to her feet. She suddenly slipped on ice that had hardened on the concrete, causing her to fall forth, notebook slipping out from her grasp and landing at the pair of boots that belonged to the homeless soul.

She grunted in pain and grasped at the ground to haul herself up, nothing hurt as the cold numbed her.

The individual looked up, finally, as the fall caused enough of a commotion for this person to look up.

Honey colored eyes were uncovered by the hood that fell back just slightly. Adorning her face under those cold eyes were freckles, endless, almost. Krista gasped and went to grab her notebook as she stood up.

"You alright?" A feminine, deep voice came from that person.

"I'm...I'm good," Krista let out with a sniffle.

"You're the fifth person to fall over that today," she said nonchalantly, eyes flickering to the ice that Krista had stumbled over. She must have been at that spot for quite a while, given that she had such an observation.

Krista was close enough to smell the stench of alcohol and weeks of a body that hadn't had a good bath. She grimaced, the thought of how many people passed by without noticing the woman got her thinking. That side of her with a conscience wanted to help her, though the logical side told her not to. However, this was a woman, not a man, surely there wouldn't be harm in taking her in, at least offer her a place until the storm stops.

"There's a snow storm heading our way," Krista explained to her, she held out her hand. "Would you like to wait it out with me?"

A raspy cough came from her, Krista hesitated to hold her hand out any longer. "You're just gonna open your doors to a stranger?"

"I wouldn't be human if I didn't do this."

"You think I don't have a home?" She sounded offended.

The winds picked up, forcing Krista to retract her hand and tuck it with her notebook to her chest. "It...it doesn't look like you do. I can walk you there, if you have one."

"That...I can appreciate," she said, she grappled at the wall and used it to hoist herself up.

She towered over Krista easily, her looming form looking more like a dead tree than a human being. When she stood up, it was revealed that her only ragged article of clothing was her long coat. She wore cleaner clothes underneath given that the front was open; she wasn't homeless, just poorly dressed for the day.

"I went out drinking last night...kinda lost track of where I was wandering from the pub, ended up sitting here."

"Well, it's good you have a home. Where is it?" Krista asked as they started walking together, just a few inches away from one another so that they could hear their own voices.

"Not too far from here...you?"

"Same."

The woman walked on, leading her about.

It was the same direction of her apartment.

Eventually they stopped at the entrance of it, the lobby, they entered and she started removing her coat to brush it free of the ice that accumulated upon it. With a better view of her appearance, she was slender and lanky, thin really, she only had a pullover underneath that thing, along with some torn jeans. So she was only out there since the evening.

Wouldn't she had gotten sick out there?

"You live here?" Krista let out.

"Yeah, third floor," she answered bluntly.

"That's mine too."

The woman raised a brow.

What a coincidence.

"Up the elevator? Hangovers and stairs aren't the best of friends," the woman reasoned under a soft chuckle.

Krista stared up at her, she was still hungover? It was amazing that she was operational to even walk given that she found her keeled over in the corner. "Yeah, up that thing."

They entered the elevator that was kept around the corner in the lobby, tucked away from sight by a wall. The building itself was fairly old, built around the late 70s. Tenants from all walks of life stayed here, the old, the young, though the young was just an occasional presence. Krista was one of them.

They waited in silence, well, the woman belched so there it goes.

"Do you always wander around drunk?"

"When I'm bar hoping, yeah," the woman huskily replied, sniffling into her sleeve; she had her overcoat slung over her shoulder.

Something about the woman got to Krista, it was hard to place a word about her given she knew nothing about her but it was like she felt she could...just be near her. She wasn't menacing, and while she glared, she figured it was just how Ymir looked. Her facial structure didn't change much, she carried herself as though she were lugging some burden upon her back, though it may be the booze.

The familiar _ding!_ came from the elevator, the doors groaned painfully as they opened, they went in as it was empty.

"How long you been here?" Krista asked.

The taller woman looked down at her bony fingers, she had to count. "About...ten years. Never really go out much or talk to people."

"I've been here for two. I never seen you around here," she pointed out.

"Again, I don't step out much."

It was a blunt statement. Krista never went out either unless it was necessary, she was the stay-at-home type. The woman may have left her apartment whenever she wanted to go out for drinks at night, hence she was an elusive person.

Krista never met the neighbors of her building either, that was fine.

They stopped on their floor and got out, Krista followed her closely until she stopped at her door...which was conveniently next to hers.

The freckled woman shuffled about, her hands going through her pockets. "Damn, where are you- oh, here."

She shoved the key into the hole and opened her door.

Not surprisingly, a billowing air of tobacco and liquor assaulted Krista's nose. She was accustomed to it but she wasn't expecting it to come out, she gasped and waffed it away, nose crinkling. "Geeze."

"Sorry about that," she grumbled, she stepped in,"thanks for helping me out."

"No problem...I'm right next door," Krista said, pointed to the side.

She nodded and closed the door behind her, doing lord knows what that was on her daily agenda.

Krista sighed and went to her apartment, getting her own keys and unlocking the door.


	2. Chapter 2

I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin

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><p>Her damn heater was broken as well, it was colder in here than in the lecture hall of the university.<p>

Krista shuddered as she tried reading through her book, barely going passed the fiftieth page before deciding to get another blanket. She went into her room, wrapped herself into her comforter, and walked back out as a giant marshmallow...only to be frozen once more. She hated the winter, she glared out through the window, out to the whitened street where all she saw were blurs of the other side.

Recalling earlier, that woman's room had an immense amount of heat rushing over her when she opened the door.

She pretended she was in that room, earplugs on to block out the woman's voice- all she wanted was the heat.

The clock told her it was nine in the evening, hopefully the woman was up. After all, she hoped the woman believed in debts, she owed her for guiding her back home.

She shed the blankets off of her small frame and went to dress herself properly, casually. Her mind only cared for warmth, not for company, hopefully the woman would at least be nice enough to let her in.

Krista was back in the hallway, feet clad in socks. She arrived at the door, teeth chattering. The fucking hallway was colder!

Her shaking hand went to wrack at the door, knuckles hitting wood; in her other hand was her book and notes.

There was a groan from the inside, then a clatter of something, eventually the bolts and locks opened and the freckled woman's head popped out, curious in a daze. "...you? What?"

That heat of tobacco engulfed her, as did the liquor, but she braved it for the sake of the temperature.

"...my heater's b...broken," Krista said, shivering. "C...can I come in?"

The woman stared at her, eyes narrowing as though she were going through a check-list in her mind, then she shrugged. "Come in, make yourself cozy."

As much as she expected the room to be a trash heap, it was clean and orderly, to an extent. There were no empty bottles littering the place, instead, they were filled in a nice collection on the kitchen counter. The only dirty thing that rose from the cleanliness were the ashes from cigarettes that were kept in a little tray on the table, the tray on the counter, and anywhere the woman seemed to occupy around her apartment.

For an apparent drunkard, the woman kept her shit together, a contrast to Krista's own messy apartment.

Krista walked in, slowly, following the woman after she closed the door behind her.

She looked up and down Krista again, then pointed at the dinning table in the small kitchenette. "You can study here if you want."

"Thanks."

And so they went about their business.

The woman served herself a glass of some honey colored liquid, she drank it down, sighing at the burn that she reveled in. She drank once more- didn't she just get over a hangover? Whatever.

Krista worked herself into writing.

A near hour had passed as the woman had apparently got drunk- she was stationed at her couch at first, then had decided to speak, words slurred,"Never got your name."

Krista had to tear her eyes away from the page, her concentration broken as she forgot the woman was there. She marked her place with her thumb as she replied,"Krista."

"Y...yiii...ya, Ymir," Ymir responded, she chuckled at her flawed speech. "I'm Ymir."

It was ironic.

Having the name of a frost giant yet living in a perfectly warm room was just...ironic.

Krista looked over at her as Ymir got up and staggered over to the table, she nearly stumbled as she pulled out a chair next to Krista. She plopped herself down and reached over for her notebook. "May I?"

Krista wasn't using it. "Go ahead."

Ymir took it, her head swaying for a moment as though she were trying to keep the world from spinning. She brought her focus onto the endless notes of her pages. She let out a grunt here and there, Krista couldn't tell if she were approving or disapproving of her work.

"Not bad on taking note in Gilman, that poor woman tearing away at the wallpaper showing her need for liberation from insanity. S...shame that women had to go through that, c-creativity being cut off," Ymir muttered.

Krista frowned, she wasn't interested in her studies, she was only doing so for the sake of getting the grade. It wasn't like there could be sympathy for works, she just never saw it like some people, all she saw on paper were words that had 'hidden' meanings between the lines.

"Yeah, it was pretty interesting."

"What're you majoring in?" Ymir asked of her.

"I went in undecided," Krista confessed with a sigh. "Not sure what I want to do."

Ymir continued going through her notes. "Looking at you...Literature is your best bet, you seem to suit the type."

"Don't know if I should take it as a compliment."

"Take it as one, yeah?"

"...sure."

Yimr slouched forward, hand on the notes Krista was working on. She figured she'd take a break and she let Ymir slide the pink notebook in front of her, her dazed eyes skimmed the pages. "...Plath, if I remember, right?"

"Sylvia Plath, yeah. We're covering her novel for this week, The Bell Jar."

"What do you think of it?"

Krista shrugged. "Feels like a response to Catcher in the Rye, only less complaints and more humor."

"Character's a cynic," Ymir stated,"very much echoes Plath herself, woman nearly put most of life into this thing."

"I take it you read it," Krista surmised, she folded her arms on the table and laid her head upon it. "I don't see the point of it, really."

Ymir frowned and slapped the book down to the table in a lazy toss. She reclined deeply in her chair to a point where her head rested back onto the backrest, she stared at her ceiling. "The point of that...is a lot of things, take it from a woman's point of view, you see the suppression. Take it from a sociological point of view...you see something that covers more than just women."

"Please, enlighten me...getting tired of feminism here."

"Well, for one, society deems appearances more than intellect," she slurred, her hand went up to revolve in an uncontrolled beat as though she were pulling words out of the air, though Krista never felt that; she felt Ymir knew more than the bottom of a bottle. "Esther, the protagonist...she's deathly smart but she's put...she's put in a world where it serves no use to her. Social life and academic life, she's academically inclined, but she's objectified as she's a woman...see the message there?"

Krista merely shrugged. "I suppose...I'm not really book-smart myself."

"I'm...I'm not telling you to relate to her, just see the message in that book," Ymir firmly established, she shot her head forward and stared at her with those honey-colored eyes. They looked so warm, so hot, burning with something.

Her name was truly ironic.

"Well...thank you for telling me that," Krista sighed, she reached to scrap back her notes and scribble down whatever Ymir had just said. "You studied at the university?"

Ymir snorted, for some reason Krista took it as a 'yes'.

"You must be smart yourself."

"You have no idea," Ymir said, for once she smirked,"impressive, huh?"

"Not really," Krista admitted,"it's...not a priority for me to find anyone smart, I mean...if you can spit out random facts of history, what's the use of it?"

Ymir grimaced. "It's people like you that are why those like Plath wrote the damn book."

It looked like she struck a nerve, she immediately apologized,"I'm sorry for insulting you."

"Not just me, my lifestyle. Trust me...I ain't just a drunk, not just a drunk, not a drunk, I'm not a drunk."

"You're drunk right now."

Ymir suddenly laughed.

The woman really was off her rocker, though it made her curious as to why she was like that.

"I'm...I'm a dying breed, Krista, may as well put me on a preservation and pray I survive, maybe even have a chance to repopulate."

She slammed her knee in another fit of laughter.

Krista failed to see the humor in this, in Ymir, she degraded herself yet laughed over it. From that, she began to wonder why she even did that, what even brought her to drink so heavily.

A dying breed. Alcoholics are common. Intellectuals...she was probably referring to that.

The clock on the microwave said it was nearing midnight, she had a morning class tomorrow so she may as well start heading to bed. She got up and gathered her things in her arms, Ymir didn't seem to mind her leaving as she didn't protest it. Besides, hearing her ramble left and right won't get her time to move on and just finish schooling for...something she didn't know what to do with herself.

As she reached the door, Ymir finally spoke up,"Don't you say...no, didn't you say you're heater is broken?"

"Um, yeah...but I don't want to sleep in a place where someone smokes," she excused herself, it was a flat lie. She spotted a pack of Benson & Hedges on a small stand by the door, as Ymir was looking away, Krista swiped it off the surface. "...thank you, though."

"Just...knock any time, I ain't going anywhere."

Krista didn't answer to that, she merely stepped out and went back to her apartment. At her window was a fan that blew air outwards to the world, she plopped herself at her usual spot, her notes scattered on the coffee table. Once she turned the fan on, a half used lighter that laid on the sill was ready for her- she took one cigarette from Ymir's pack and popped it to her mouth.

She ignited it and watched the small wisps of gray snake out into the fan, billowing out to be lost in white.

It had been a week since she took a drag, she needed one. Her body relaxed and grew heated, her chest filled with ashes and fire, warming her body, and soon the cold apartment became bearable.

As she was nearing the end, she swore she heard singing in the wind.

She realized that the voice she heard from time to time was Ymir's own, it was the same one that she hated when she first moved in but as it became a natural phenomenon, it became a lullaby to her.

Krista rubbed her eyes and put out the cigarette in a metal canteen, covering it shut to not let the smoke out. She turned off the unit and got up, undressing herself for the night.

By the time her head hit the pillow, the singing stopped.


End file.
